From NIFT to Factory Floor: How Government-Backed VCF-SC Helped SC Woman Entrepreneur Munmun Biswas Build a ₹7.92 Crore Textile Empire With Her Brand Indiloom

In a textile unit in Khardaha, a quiet industrial neighbourhood on the outskirts of Kolkata, a first-generation entrepreneur is running a fully automated digital fabric printing facility - designing, manufacturing, and selling under her own brand, to clients ranging from design houses and exporters to government organisations and e-commerce customers across India and beyond.

Her name is Munmun Biswas. Her brand is Indiloom. And the company she built - Coeval Crafts Private Limited - is now a case study in what India's Venture Capital Fund for Scheduled Castes can make possible when it backs the right founder at the right moment.

The Founder

Biswas is an MBA from IIFT Kolkata and a graduate in Textile Designing from NIFT Kolkata - a combination of management acumen and craft expertise that is rare in any sector, rarer still among first-generation entrepreneurs from Scheduled Caste communities who face institutional barriers at every stage of business building. She founded Coeval Crafts with a clear vision: to build a modern textile enterprise that blends India's rich fabric traditions with digital manufacturing - and to do it at scale, professionally, and under her own brand identity.

The Government Backing That Made It Real

Recognising the enterprise's growth potential, the Venture Capital Fund for Scheduled Castes extended financial support amounting to ₹4.93 crore in 2017 and 2024 through venture capital assistance comprising equity and optionally convertible debentures.

The VCF-SC scheme, run by the Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment, is designed to provide concessional capital to SC entrepreneurs who would otherwise be locked out of traditional lending channels due to collateral constraints and credit history gaps. For Coeval Crafts, the twin tranches of support - spaced seven years apart - provided both the foundation capital to establish the factory and the growth capital to scale it.

The assistance enabled the company to establish a fully automated digital textile printing facility equipped with advanced machinery, strengthen its working capital, improve operational efficiency, and generate employment for designers and technical professionals. It also helped expand market reach through wholesale, retail, and e-commerce channels.

The Numbers Today

The impact is measurable and significant. Today, the enterprise has generated employment for 80 people, including 60 Scheduled Caste employees and 20 non-SC employees. The company has built assets worth ₹7.92 crore, achieved annual revenue of ₹3.73 crore, and strengthened its net worth to ₹2.82 crore. It has established strong business linkages with design houses, exporters, government organisations, wholesalers, retailers, and e-commerce customers.

From ₹4.93 crore in government-backed capital to ₹7.92 crore in assets, ₹3.73 crore in annual revenue, and 80 livelihoods created - the return on this particular public investment is substantial by any measure.

In Her Own Words

"Through the concessional assistance extended by VCF-SC, we were able to transform a small textile venture into a professionally managed manufacturing enterprise. Through our brand Indiloom, we are blending India's rich textile heritage with modern innovation, creating sustainable employment opportunities and delivering high-quality products to customers across India and beyond," said Biswas.

Munmun Biswas's story is one data point in a much larger policy argument. Access to capital remains the single most significant barrier for SC entrepreneurs in India - not the absence of ideas, ambition, or skill. The VCF-SC scheme exists precisely to bridge that gap, providing equity and quasi-equity financing to founders who have the capability to build but lack the collateral to access conventional credit.

Coeval Crafts demonstrates what happens when that gap is bridged: a professionally trained founder with domain expertise and a clear market vision builds a real, asset-backed, employment-generating enterprise - one that is now competing in wholesale, retail, export, and digital commerce simultaneously, under a brand she owns entirely.